th

The 14 World Conference on Earthquake Engineering

October 12-17, 2008, Beijing, China

Synthesized near field ground motion in a shallow basin

H.M. Liu1 ,X. X. Tao2 ,X. D. Sun2 and P. Li2
1
2

Chongqing Communications research and Design Institute, China

School of Civil Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology, China
Email: taoxiaxin@yahoo.com.cn taoxiaxin@yahoo.com.cn

ABSTRACT :
Near field ground motion in a shallow basin from strong earthquake occurred on a blind fault beneath is
synthesized in this paper. A hybrid source model is adopted, which combines Asperity model and K square
model. The ground motion at high frequency range is synthesized by a random method with dynamic corner
frequency. Two steps are carried out to calculate the low frequency motion. Analytical Green Function Method
is for the deeper part of the crust with source and 3D wave propagation finite element method is applied for the
shallower part. The ground motion in the basin is further calculated by means of 1D equivalent linearization
method at each node of calculation network. The spatial relativity of the ground motions at nodes next to each
another in the basin is finally analyzed.

KEYWORDS:
near field ground motion, a shallow basin

1. INTRODUCTION
In general, the damage in urban area during earthquake is mainly from strong ground motion. The ground
motion is synthesized for seismic design of structure and seismic microzonation of the city, especially for those
located in a basin and near or on active faults. The near field motion is very complicated since it is governed
predominantly by earthquake source. In this paper, a hybrid source model is adopted to describe the slip
distribution on rupture plan. Random synthesis and numerical Green function are used to generate motions in
high frequency range ( f > 1Hz ) and low frequency ( f < 1Hz ) range respectively. The input of basin effect
calculation is then generated by superposition of the two motions. Seismic response of a shallow basin is
calculated by means of 1D equivalent linearization procedure. As a case study, the result of the basin response
from an earthquake with magnitude 6.5 is presented, and the distribution pattern of the calculated motions is
summarized in the paper.

2. HYBRID SOURCE MODEL

Finite fault source model is widely adopted in simulation of near filed ground motion from large earthquake, by
which the overestimation of point source model can be avoided and the rupture directivity and the hanging wall
effect can be taken into account. The main idea of the hybrid source model presented herein is combining
asperity model and k square model. The slip distribution on the fault plan is determined by the superposition of
the slip of long wavelength calculated by asperity model and the slip of short wavelength calculated by k square
model (Tao and Wang, 2004). Parameters in the model consist of three parts that are global parameters (rupture
area, fault length, fault width and average slippage), local parameters (the area, location and slippage of asperity
on the fault and the rupture starting point), and parameters of k square model (spatial corner wave numbers in
two directions along strike and down dip) respectively. Some of them are estimated from the investigated of the
fault, such as the orientation and the dip angle of the fault plan, some other parameters can be derived from a set
of scaling laws (Wang and Tao, 2003) with similar form as following:
log P = aM W + b
(1)

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The 14 World Conference on Earthquake Engineering

October 12-17, 2008, Beijing, China

where P is a source parameter, Mw is moment magnitude, a and b are coefficients. Figure 1 shows four
examples of the source model of a given earthquake with Mw 6.5. The plan is further divided into many sub
sources, and the slips are merged into each of them.

Fig. 1. Source models for an earthquake with Mw 6.5

3. SYNTHESIS OF HIGH FREQUENCY GROUND MOTION

Each sub source can be taken as a point source. Acceleration Fourier spectrum caused from a point source can
be estimated from equation (2):
FA( M 0 , f , R) = S ( M 0 , f ) G ( R ) D( R, f ) A( f ) P( f )
(2)
where S ( M 0 , f

is source spectrum, G ( R) represents geometric attenuation, D( R, f ) stands for inelastic

attenuation, A( f ) is surface amplification factor, P ( f ) is a low pass filter. The acceleration time history at
a given site caused by all sub sources can be superposed in time domain with some time delays:
N L NW

a ( t ) = aij ( t tij )
i =1

where

NL

and

NW

(3)

are numbers of sub sources along strike and down dip respectively, tij is the time delay of

the ij th sub source from the distance between the source point to the site and the difference of the triggering
time. In order to eliminate the disturbance of sub source size on high frequency radiant energy, dynamic corner
frequency (Motazedian and Atkinson, 2005) is adopted herein, with which the acceleration spectrum of the ij th
sub source can be described by the following form:

S ij ( M 0 , f ) =

M 0ij H ij (2f ) 2
[1 + ( f f 0ij ) 2 ]

(4)

where C is a coefficient having no dependence on frequency, M 0ij is the moment of the ij th sub source, H ij is
a compensative factor to keep the high frequency radiant energy conservation, f 0ij is the dynamic corner
frequency which depends on the rupture area and changes as the rupture propagates.

4. CALCULATION OF LOW FREQUENCY MOTION

A two-step procedure is applied to calculate ground motions in low frequency ( f < 1Hz ) range. The whole
region under consideration is divided into two parts, a deep homogenous zone with the source in it and a

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The 14 World Conference on Earthquake Engineering

October 12-17, 2008, Beijing, China

shallow inhomogeneous zone from the ground surface to bottom of the upper crust. The latter is divided further
into finite element network, as shown in figure 2.
Firstly, displacement time history at each node on the bottom of the overburden layer caused by each sub source
is calculated by 3-order Green function as shown in equation (5).
m

FP Gnp = F G

(5)

i =1 j =1

Displacement time histories of all sub sources at each node are superimposed to provide the input at that node in
the next step. Secondly, displacement time histories at the nodes at ground surface are calculated by the
space-time decoupling explicit finite element analysis with a second-order local artificial transmitting boundary
(Liao et al., 1984).

Fig. 2. Computing model for low frequency ground motion

5.SEISMIC response OF SHALLOW BASIN

The seismic response of a basin can be obtained from finite element simulation with a smaller element size for
the expected frequency resolution with a detail 3-D velocity structure of the basin. It is obvious that the smaller
of element size, the much more elements. For shallow basin under consideration, the total thickness of soil
layers in the basin is no more than twenty meters. So the element size must be taken less than 10 meters, but
which will result in unacceptable computing time and RAM space. Therefore, 1D equivalent linearization
approach is adopted in the soil layer transfer function of shallow basin to describe the detail velocity structure as
well as nonlinearity of soil layer.
Firstly, the basin is zoned from the thickness of soil layers. Then calculate the transfer function for each zone
based on datum of boreholes in the zone. Multiply ground motions beneath the basin by the corresponding
transfer function instead of the surface amplification factor A( f ) in Eq. (2) to get ground motion field in the
basin.
Finally, the ground motions are obtained from the superimposition of high frequency ground motion and low
frequency ground motion at each point in time domain after the low and high pass filtering respectively.

6.RESULT OF CASE STUDY

Figure 3 shows the PGA (peak ground acceleration) zoning map at rock site in the basin and its
vicinity caused by the earthquake with magnitude 6.5 at the fault segment in the case study.

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The 14 World Conference on Earthquake Engineering

October 12-17, 2008, Beijing, China

Fig. 3. Peak ground acceleration zoning map at rock site in the basin and its vicinity
Figure 4 shows the zoning map of soil condition in the basin and its vicinity. The corresponding average transfer
functions of soil layer in the zones are calculated by 1D equivalent linearization approach. The surface ground
motions are amplified by the soil transfer functions from those on the buried rock surface.

Fig. 4. Site condition zoning map in the basin and its vicinity
The peak ground acceleration zoning map is shown in figure 5. The final zoning map is presented in figure 6, in
which some zones in figure 5 are divided into two or more to show the difference between the acceleration
spectra with the different site conditions.

Fig. 5. PGA zoning map in the basin and its vicinity

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The 14 World Conference on Earthquake Engineering

October 12-17, 2008, Beijing, China

Fig. 6. Final PGA zoning map in the basin and its vicinity

7.CONCLUSION
A synthesized ground motion field in a shallow basin and its vicinity from an earthquake with magnitude 6.5 on
blind fault beneath, is presented in this paper. A hybrid source model is adopted, which combined Asperity
model and K square model to take into account the physical nature and ignorance on the slip distribution on the
faulting plane. The ground motion in high frequency range is synthesized by a random method in which
dynamic corner frequency was applied. The ground motion in low frequency range is calculated by two steps:
the displacement field at the bottom of upper crust is calculated by analytical Green Function Method and the
ground motion at rock surface is calculated by 3D wave propagation finite element method with the input from
the first step. The input of basin analysis is worked out from the superimposition of motions in high and low
frequency range without the surface amplification factor. A 1D equivalent linearization method is adopted in
calculation of transfer function of soil layers in the basin. The ground motion is worked out by amplified the
input motions with the transfer functions. The final peak ground acceleration zoning map in the basin and its
vicinity for the case study is presented with the different response spectra in different soil condition zones.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

This work was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China under Contract No.
50778058 and 90715038 and National Key Project of Scientific and Technical Supporting Program
2006BAC13B02.
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The 14 World Conference on Earthquake Engineering

October 12-17, 2008, Beijing, China

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